First from our region, students of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) submitted a successful tender, which means we accomplished the terms of the competition. Currently our team has 50 student members, not only from the Faculty of Architecture but from other different faculties we accomplished. Our goal is to create an innovative solar building in which we apply our architectural and technical developments.

Active House Conference will be organised for first time in Hungary

To the implementation of energy efficient buildings of the future on theoretical level and in international context everything is given. In 2010, the Active House Association was formed with the participation of building industry and more than 50 representatives from the construction research institutes. Its aim is to promote inter-professional dialogues, exchange of the experiences and to spread the sustainable construction approach. Thanks to the international initiatives, between 17th September and 11th October will be held the first Active house Conference in Hungary with the participation of well-known personalities of this profession like Zsolt Gunther, architect, vice president of the Active house Association; and Jury Troy, architect of the Austrian ?Sunlight house? that was built under the program VELUX Model Home 2020.

The patron of the conference-series ? called ?From the intelligent building to the active house? ? is dr.Ferenc Makovényi, Dean of the Faculty of Miklós Ybl Building Science at the St. Stephen?s University, who in relation to this initiative said: ?The conference aims to present those modern solutions with them already in the present is possible to plan buildings that are environmentally responsible, efficient, elegant, controlled intelligently and pre-show the future buildings. I?m glad that as a patron I can contribute to the future?s effective planning and to the transfer of necessary professional knowledge for the implementation.?

Besides the theoretical knowledge the experts of this field can get results from practical experiences as well, thanks to the VELUX Group?s Model Home 2020 program, in this way they can further improve the criteria of sustainable construction. At the national conference, in the framework of the Model Home 2020 program Juri Troy architect from Vorarlberg will speak about the thirdly built Sunshine house in Austria. The Austrian house speciality?s that it is able to take into 4 times more sunshine than average thanks to the roof windows and vertical glass surfaces, thereby maximizing the passive solar energy utilization. A minimal heating is necessary with the usage of the soil-collector heat pumps, the solar panels produce electricity, while the solar collectors provide the production of domestic hot water. All these together contribute to the fact that according to the active house concept the Sunlight house generates more energy than what it consumes during the operation.

The elaboration and the continuous updating of the active house concept is encouraged by the European Union?s directive, which says that from 2020 the newly built houses need to meet the requirements of sustainable building, such as the minimization of energy consumption and carbon emissions. In order to this idea, in the future such houses will be built that not only help reducing energy consumption, heating and water heating expenditures but will have positive impact on the environment and they can contribute to the preservation of people?s heath.

Juri Troy Austrian architect works together with Matthias Hein since 2006, who is an Austrian architect as well. The pair from Bregenz has designed buildings like the one that was built in the Austrian Dornbirn. It is a low-energy family house, which shows respect for natural wood and in 2009 it won the Wood Architecture Award of Vorarlberg (Vorarlberger Holzbaupreis). For the also jointly designed three-generation family house in Hörbranz they got the BTV Builders Award (BTV Bauherrnpreis) in 2010. Moreover, the architects were also awarded for the Sunlight house that was built in the framework of VELUX Model Home 2020: they got the Wood Architecture Award of Vorarlberg (Vorarlberger Holzbaupreis) and the Award of Active Architecture 2010.